Sunday AM Recap
July 5, 2026
Link: https://www.youtube.com/live/9ZBLlobGi-4?si=Q26y8Q8pFJ_N_0ZC
Apostle Susan Powers opened service.
Andrea Colyer led worship.
After worship, the congregation was given an opportunity to practice 1 Corinthians 14:26 just as they did last week.
Cathy Spangler:
Cathy shared about her painting and about knowing may people who are up to their necks in “stuff” right now and the need to Look Up. She then shared the following:
Notes from Dream Streams by Matt Lockett
A dream needs to be told. But the goal is to KNOW and proclaim the Word of the LORD!
If they are “prophets and if the Word of the LORD is with them, then LET THEM INTERCEDE with the LORD of Hosts! (Jeremiah 27:8)
If you want to be prophetic, then be an intercessor.
What is God showing you? Carry those things in prayer! Let your desires begin to align with His desires. Then God will speak even more, refining your understanding.
Pay attention to details, especially when it comes to dreams and intercession.
Keep a “dream journal”. Write down your dreams as soon as you wake up. Combine your dream with an open bible….meditate.
Dream with God. Even when it doesn’t make sense at first. Be faithful to the part He gives you.
Dreams from God will break you out of your small-mindedness and deliver you from any thought that your life is insignificant.
A dream is the SEED of God-THOUGHT. I choose to believe that every dream carries the potential of a movement of God that He wants to initiate in the earth…..like the parable of the Sower (Matthew 13:3-8), dreams require good soil to grow and bear fruit. When small, unified bands of believers gather to inquire of the LORD, their living rooms can become the council room of heaven!! Prophetic parts come together like holy puzzle pieces forming a picture of something that does not yet exist. Habakkuk 2:2-3 says to WRITE the vision and WAIT for it! So we need to encourage one another in the waiting. Pray for each other, so that disappointment and discouragement doesn’t take root. Every single person is ELIGIBLE to receive the next dream that unlocks the whole thing.
The Holy Spirit is again summoning the ekklesia to become a prophetic people…not merely individuals with gifts, but communities of disciplined discerners who fast together, dream together, interpret together and pray together. In a generation drunk on information and numb to revelation, we must re-learn the sacred art of waiting on the LORD. The church should be awakening to her calling as heaven’s earthly legislature. We need to become the kind of people God can entrust with dreams. The goal is not to see our own desires fulfilled, but to participate in the unfolding of God’s will.
A prophetic word in church will edify someone. A prophetic word outside the church can turn a heart toward God and bring a whole town to Jesus — remember the woman at the well in John 4. There are people near you right now — in a restaurant, an airport, a grocery store aisle — who are carrying questions they have never been able to ask out loud. They are within fifty feet of someone who hears God's voice. You don’t have to be the most trained or the most anointed. You simply have to be available, and willing to do it for Him. You might just be the answer He is sending. - Dutch Sheets.
Angelica Oakley:
“Didn’t our hearts burn?” Don’t just read the Word “just to read the Bible,” but with a hunger and a longing to know the Lord and know what it really means. Ask Holy Spirit to reveal what it really means. Confirm what others tell you the Scriptures say. Jeremiah 20:9.
Tami Hernandez:
Tami shared there was a lot going on in her family, and she’s been traveling a lot, and it’s been hard for her to leave her family…but God has been leaving little treasures along the way, such as finding a Maori person at a random diner in Wyoming that is now coming to New Zealand with them and experiencing the Painted Rocks in Colorado. You have to pay attention. You have to open your eyes and see the many mini miracles all around.
Sean Ozbun:
Sean shared that he woke up with a Chris Tomlin song on his heart, and then the worship team - specifically Joshua, his son - started singing that exact song, “Glory In the Highest” by Chris Tomlin. Communication with the Lord is one of the most precious things we have! Sean also spoke about how nothing compares to the greatness of knowing Jesus and spending time with Him.
Rhonda Brisendine:
Rhonda shared about a new opportunity she has with the Lord’s Diner to interact with guests through their Love a Guest program. The opportunity opened up just as her time caring for her granddaughter was tapered back the exact time she was asked to participate.
Teacher Sara Ozbun closed the time with a message.
Message title: “What are you paying attention to?”
“What are you paying attention to?”
Sometime happened last Wednesday, July 1st. A new law went into effect in the state of Kansas. Students are now not allowed to have cell phones or any personal communication device that connects to the Internet during the school day, bell to bell. (Read the bill here: Cell Phone Ban in Schools
There are lots of layers to this, and lots of details in the bill, and I can talk to anyone about what the bill actually says and what it doesn’t say later. But let’s look at the reason behind the new law.
There’s a social psychologist named Jonathan Haidt that has been leading the charge for phone-free schools for years. He is very concerned about the impact of phones on kids - after reading his research, if I had to do it all over again, I’d make my kids wait until they were 16 before letting them have smartphones. There’s so much data coming out about this - we let the technology run away from us before we realized what we were doing.
Study on the impact of “task-switching” while studying. Quote: Participants averaged less than six minutes on task prior to switching most often due to technological distractions including social media, texting and preference for task-switching. Having a positive attitude toward technology did not affect being on-task during studying. However, those who preferred to task-switch had more distracting technologies available and were more likely to be off-task than others. Also, those who accessed Facebook had lower GPAs than those who avoided it. Finally, students with relatively high use of study strategies were more likely to stay on-task than other students.
An experiment was performed studying the impact of just having a phone available - not even being on it, but having it right there, impedes cognitive ability. Quote: The closer the phone was to students’ awareness, the worse they performed on the tests. Even just having a phone in one’s pocket sapped students’ abilities.
Study after study shows the long-term impact on students’ attention and ability to focus.
Link to article: The Case for Phone-Free Schools
Link to study: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/691462
Link to study: Facebook and Texting Made Me Do It
Link: The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance
Haidt gave a commencement address at NYU this past Spring, and the theme was “treasure your attention.”
Link to transcript: NYU Commencement Address
Link to video: Haidt Commencement Address
TREASURE YOUR ATTENTION.
“In 2014, when she was nearly 80 years old, the poet Mary Oliver wrote a short poem titled “Instructions for Living a Life.” It goes like this:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
It sounds simple. But paying attention is in fact one of the most challenging and meaningful things you can do. Because what you pay attention to shapes what you care about. And what you care about shapes who you become. (Emphasis added.)
Taking control of your own attention has never been easy — which is why it’s one of the many things this university has tried to prepare you to do. In 2005, the writer David Foster Wallace gave one of this century’s best-known commencement addresses, at Kenyon College. He said, “the really significant education-in-thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.” He was right, and he seemed to anticipate that, two decades later, there would be so many powerful people and big companies trying to take that choice away from you.
They compete with each other to capture your attention. Think about that phrase. It acknowledges that your attention is valuable. But it also reveals that some of the biggest corporations in human history aren’t trying to earn your attention, or deserve your attention. They’re trying to take it from you.
Consider just one example. Meta is valued at well over a trillion dollars, even though few of us have given it any money. How is that possible? Because it invented a business model that extracts attention from nearly half of all human beings and sells it to advertisers. Other industries followed: video games, dating, gambling — even investing has been gamified and optimized to keep us all staring and swiping. We’ve all had the experience of picking up our phone, maybe for a good reason, only to find ourselves, an hour later, mindlessly scrolling. That’s not an accident. That’s our phones and apps, doing what they were designed to do. - Jonathan Haidt
What you pay attention to shapes what you care about. What you care about shapes who you become.
Consider your attention as a powerful treasure in your hands. Meta and Google are after your attention more than anything else - more than your money. Because your attention will lead to money, but more than that, it will lead to POWER. Because Haidt is right: what you pay attention to shapes what you care about, and what you care about shapes who you become.
We had a question posed to us recently: “Do I have your attention now?” The Lord has asked us this question through our pastor - have you taken the time to ponder this question? Does He have your attention now? Because as I pondered that with the Lord, He started asking me another question: “What are you paying attention to?”
Or put another way…”what are you CHOOSING to pay attention to?”
I ran a little experiment on my Facebook scrolling (called, by the way, doomscrolling). I counted out 10 entries on my newsfeed, and then went back and counted the types of entries. Out of ten entries, 2 were trying to sell me something, and two were “suggested reading,” meaning Meta wanted me to stop and read something under the guise of “we think you’ll like this.” So…40% of my newsfeed was nothing I chose but things chosen specifically to grab my attention.
I refreshed and did it again. This time 50% of what appeared was not chosen by me but by Meta. To grab my attention.
And here’s the thing…the longer I doomscroll, the more my attention turns from the goodness of the Lord to my lack. Oh, if only I had that car. Oh, I want that shirt. OMG, that kitchen gadget would be life-changing. And pretty soon these things are planted in my head, and I feel panicky about what I do not have.
I call tell when this is getting bad because I start having my 4am freakouts. That’s when I wake up sometime between 3am and 4am having a panic attack over the state of our finances. Please note - we are up to date on our bills. We have food in the house. The AC is working fine. We have three happy, healthy pets. Like, nothing’s wrong. But - “what are you choosing to pay attention to?” Am I paying attention to the Lord’s provision…or my perceived lack?
This past week I had two examples.
Whining to the Lord about the car and Him asking “are you focused on lack of AC or the fact that you have two running vehicles?”
More abstract: conversation with Matthew about the time spent cleaning at the other CCC. “Are you focusing on what you thought was shameful or burdensome or the fact that it was family time during which you taught your kids the importance of working hard and paying your debts?” (Note: Anna Ozbun shared that she and her brothers are also thankful because they actually know how to clean things, which is a life skill not many of their peers have.)
What are you paying attention to?
My painting - Deuteronomy 11:26-32 (I painted the wrong verse. Wow.)
26 See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse— 27 the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; 28 the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known. 29 When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses. 30 As you know, these mountains are across the Jordan, westward, toward the setting sun, near the great trees of Moreh, in the territory of those Canaanites living in the Arabah in the vicinity of Gilgal. 31 You are about to cross the Jordan to enter and take possession of the land the Lord your God is giving you. When you have taken it over and are living there, 32 be sure that you obey all the decrees and laws I am setting before you today.
Blessing if you obey the commands.
A curse if you don’t.
Scoot back up to verse 16 - you can be enticed away to other gods.
Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them.
“What are you paying attention to?”
This passage was talking about the Torah…but the concept goes all the way back to the Garden, to the first things God said “that’s mine, don’t do that” about.
Podcast:https://bibleproject.com/podcasts/gods-first-commands-in-the-bible/
There’s a ton of Hebrew language stuff going on here that I am not going to dig into…that’s why I recommend listening to this podcast. Worth your while.
Setting the scene: God has created the world, he creates the garden, puts the humans there.
Genesis 2:8-9 says:
8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Ok…we have learned that order is important. So I want you to note: pleasing to the eye, good for food.
This is important: EVERYTHING in the Garden was good. The Tree of Knowing Good and Bad was NOT evil. God created it. It wasn’t that the tree was bad…it was that God said “that one is mine. Look, but don’t eat.”
Verse 9: Every tree is desirable for seeing and good for eating. Desirable to see, good to eat. These two are CONNECTED. You desire something, you want it, and you desire it because it’s good.
Every creature wants things because they want what is good for them. We want things because they are good. What any creature wants is its own good.
Now what we THINK is good is not actually always good. But the reason we do anything is because we think it's good.
This is worth meditating: What we desire is good for ourselves. It becomes corrupted, but the basic truth remains: we are motivated to do what we think is good for us.
And it’s in the verses here - desirable and good are written as parallels.
Seeing and eating - the difference here is important. You can see that something is good and NOT consume it. See it’s good, but don’t make it part of yourself.
This is the cycle we see in Judges: “In those days Israel had no king, and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Judges 21:25. They weren’t doing things because these things were WRONG in their own eyes…but because they were RIGHT in their own eyes.
Head back to Genesis, this time Genesis 3:6
6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
The order has changed. It’s subtle, but PAY ATTENTION.
She saw that it was good for eating AND pleasing to the eye.
What are you paying attention to?
In that moment, Eve’s attention shifted from beholding the Lord’s creation as good and wanting to consume it. Seeing and eating - the difference here is important. You can see that something is good and NOT consume it. See it’s good, but don’t make it part of yourself.
Just because we see something is good doesn't mean we get to make it part of ourselves. And the only way for us to know what is good and what isn’t good is for Father to tell us. Eve’s attention shifted and she decided for herself what was good.
Eve’s decision.
Abraham’s decisions.
David’s decisions.
Zechariah vs. Mary in their responses to the angel visits.
What are you paying attention to?
From the podcast:
WE DON’T KNOW WHAT IS GOOD FOR OURSELVES. WE ARE IGNORANT.
GOOD DESIRES CAN LEAD TO BAD ENDS. So how do we know? GOD’S COMMAND.
Good desires can lead to bad ends. And it's a problem that every human, and every generation of humans, seems to grapple with. …What's the way out? What's the solution, even if humans don't seem to listen to it? It is God's command. God's command leads to life, even when it doesn't seem like it. This is fundamental stuff. - Quote from The Bible Project
GOD’S. COMMAND. LEADS. TO. LIFE. That is fundamental to the human experience, and that’s where allll the trouble starts. God’s command leads to life. Our desires, unchecked, lead to death.
So…does He have your attention now?
What are you paying attention to?
Are you paying attention to God’s commands…or what is good in your own eyes?
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